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Literal Fulfillment of Prophecy: Existence of 73 Sections.

Having mentioned the resemblance of his Ummah with Jews, and division
of the Ummah into 73 sections, Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) mentions
that all will be in fire except one. Meaning 72 sects will be in fire
while one will be safe. When asked who the safe ones will be, Holy Prophet
(peace be upon him) replied "They are those who will be like me
and my companions" indicating that remaining 72 will resemble
Israelites while only one will resemble him and his companions. Having
said that we have to understand that there ought to be a way to separate
one Jama'at from 72. Thus there should be some method by which two sets
of sections among Muslim Ummah will be formed and in one set there will
be only one Jama'at (to which Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, referred
to as resembling him and his companions) while the other set will contain
72 sects which will resemble Jews. To go any further we have to establish
here three things. Firstly that there were at one time 73 sections of
Muslims. Secondly they formed two sets on containing one Jama'at and the
other one containing 72 sects. Thirdly the set containing one Jama'at
consisted of the followers of a claimant of Messiahship. The third condition
has to be fulfilled because, as I have established above, we are referring
to the time of the Promised Messiah (AS), only the followers of Messiah
can form a Jama'at which resembles Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and
his companions (RA). To establish that the above mentioned three conditions
were fulfilled, I shall present here my translation of a portion of an
editorial published in Urdu in Pakistani daily newspaper "Nawai Waqt"
[5].

"One of the special importance of this decision has been that
on it the consensus of Ummah has been in substantially correct manner.
Throughout the history of Islam, such an overwhelming complete consensus
has never been reached on any important topic. Other than the big religious
scholars, holders of Shar'a, all the political leaders and political
leaders of each group have agreed on this consensus. Other than these,
all sufia karam, aarifeen Billah, the leaders of Tassawaf and practices
had complete agreement. Excluding Qadianis all the rest of
72 sects which are considered to be of Muslims, agreed and
are happy on the solution of this affair. Among the leaders of the nation
and a'maideen, there does not appear to be any group which does not
have a joyous attitude towards this decision. Nation should take a notice
of this."

And that was not the only newspaper which testified the number to be
72 following is another testimony of an English newspaper published from
U.K. [6].

"By a constitutional amendment the National Assembly has stripped
half a million members of the Ahmadiyya community of their religious
status as Moslems. The excommunication of such a large number claiming
to be Moslems by a political institution is a unique event in the 1400
years of the history of Islam. The burden of taking the measure fell
on the National Assembly because Islam rejects priesthood and the Moslems,
although divided into 72 sects, do not have a church
or a pope. Religious edicts handed down by muftis or religious scholars
are not binding on any individual or body of Moslems."

Clearly, according to these newspapers there existed 73 sections in Islam,
one Jama'at-e-Ahmadiyya and the rest of the 72 (A full list of the sects
in Islam is included in Appendix II). The rest of the 72 sects were unanimous
and happy and formed a party (a set) excluding the one (the other set)
from Islam. Although they all had fatwas declaring one another to be kafirs,
when it came to the question of Ahmadi Muslims they were all united so
that there remains no doubt as to the identity of 72 and one making a
total of 73. I have already established that Jews had 72 sects at the
time of Messiah, so this hadith would be reflecting the time of Messiah
among Muslim Ummah, which all Muslims today believe is also the time of
the appearance of the Mahdi.